Stock Market Watch

Ruby Tuesday Swings in to a Loss in Q1

by ·


Despite changes in menus and new marketing efforts, fine-dining restaurant chain, Ruby Tuesday Inc. (NYSE: RT) failed to attract enough customer traffic. The restaurant chain, after the market close on Wednesday said that it swung in to a loss in fiscal first quarter. Higher costs associated to closure of some restaurants and declining same-store-sales hurt the bottom line. Shares plunged more than 10% in aftermarket hours as both non-GAAP earnings and revenue fell short of analysts’ consensus estimate.

For the latest quarter, same-store-sales at company-owned Ruby Tuesday declined 11.4% from the same period of last fiscal year while same-store-sales at franchisee owned Ruby Tuesday fell 8.4%.

Speaking to analysts in a conference call, Ruby Tuesday’s CEO, JJ Buettgen said, “The first quarter was challenging as the overall economy failed to realize any significant improvements which adversely affected us and the casual dining industry. We are disappointed that our first quarter same-restaurant sales came in below our expectations,”

For the period, Ruby Tuesday posted a loss of $22.2 million or 37 cents a share, compared to a profit of $2.6 million or 4 cents a share, in the same period of last year.

The latest period included a pre-tax impairment charge of $7.5 million linked to closure of underperforming stores.

Stripping out onetime items, loss from continuing operations stood at 36 cents a share compared to a profit of 5 cents a share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecasted a loss of 5 cents a share.

Revenue for the quarter fell to $289.67 million from $327.92 million, in the year-ago quarter. Analysts’ consensus estimate was for revenue of $298.27 million.

The Company refused to provide guidance for fiscal year 2014.








More Posts by this author

edliston
Post Written By: Ed Liston

Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.

Tags:

Ed Liston

Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing.

You may also like...